


Cake and Regrets

by qkind



Series: Killerwave week 2016 [3]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Cake, Domestic Fluff, F/M, KillerWave Week 2016, Subliminal Mathematics, but don't let this tag scare you!, it's really just everyone eating a lot of cake, thre regrets are Mick's
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-28
Updated: 2016-06-28
Packaged: 2018-07-18 19:10:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7326847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qkind/pseuds/qkind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Day 3: Domestic Life</p><p>Mick's cakes are simply to die for (not literally, Lisa, put that gun down!).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cake and Regrets

There are things about a person you only learn by living with them. Most times it’s the annoying little habits, like not hanging wet towels, or leaving underwear strewn about in the bedroom. Caitlin lucked out, and instead learned that Mick liked baking. And that his cakes were to die for.

 

The first time she tried his lemon drizzle she almost had an out of body experience. The sponge was light and zesty and perfect, and the icing tasted like the lemon had been just plucked from the tree. She could not finish her first slice fast enough. When she went for the second, her fingers bumped Mick’s. She waited for him to go for another one, but instead they both stood still, taking one end of the slice each. Seeing as it didn’t look like he was going to break anytime soon, Caitlin resolved to be the adult in the situation.

“Don’t you want another slice, Mick?”

“This one’s bigger.”

“And wouldn’t it be more polite to take a smaller one?”

“ _You_ can be polite if you want.”

Gathering her thoughts for a moment, she put on her most charming smile.

“Mick. Please let me have it?”

“No. But we can split both slides into halves and take a half of each slide if you want.”

“And what if one of the halves is bigger than the other? Cutting cake isn’t an exact science, Mick.”

“Then we cut both halves in half again and take one each.”

“And if it happens again? You can’t cut a cake into infinitely small bits!”

“Okay, take the stupid big slide! Next cake I bake, I’ll eat it all myself!”

Caitlin snatched the bigger half and smiled in triumph. Mick’s scowl was pretty cute anyway.

 

Another thing Caitlin learned when she started living with Mick was that he had a standing date with Snart on Fridays, most times – but not always – joined by Lisa as well. It was their own version of family time. She was more than okay with that; Lisa was fun, and Leonard was amusing once you got used to his dry sense of humor. And most importantly, they’d known Mick for a long time, and _demanded_ that he treat them to dessert on these dinner nights. So it was a win for Caitlin as well! Except none of them were good at sharing, and Leonard was a stickler for precision.

“Yours was _two millimeters_ wider, Lise. I’ll cut one for me.”

“You will _not_. They are exactly the same!”

“Trade me then.”

“Not a chance. You could’ve chosen this one, you didn’t, so suck it.” And she stuffed the whole slice into her mouth.

Caitlin took her plate and stood up, just in time to avoid the quick hand that would have grabbed her piece of cake, and glared at Leonard.

“Mine was fair! It was your sister’s that was bigger.”

“Actually, I think Mick’s was smaller too, which means to be _fair_ you’d have to cut a piece of yours for him.”

Mick looked suspiciously indifferent to that statement. Caitlin narrowed her eyes at him.

“What?”

“Nothing…”

When the Snarts left that night, Caitlin followed Mick to the kitchen and found a noticeably small half of a second cake was waiting for her, complete with a boyfriend that calmly savored his half with an absolute shit-eating grin on his face.

 

The first time Barry and Cisco joined their Friday dinner the mood started tentative, but when it was time for dessert everyone had managed to be comfortable around each other. Which was why Caitlin was surprised when Mick planting a Sachertorte in the middle of the table made the Snart siblings tense from feet to eyebrows. She saw them looking at each other and having the sort of silent communication that comes from many, many years of shared experiences, and then thought, _oh_. And oh, indeed.

Barry and Cisco were oblivious, of course. They weren’t aware of Mick’s culinary skills yet, so they made the appropriate comments about how good it looked, but other than that they still lived in their ignorant bliss.

Caitlin wouldn’t be left behind; she knew what this was about. No sooner Mick finished making the last cut to the cake than three hands shot at just under metahuman speed to grab the biggest slices. Barry looked impressed.

“What was _that_?” 

“Cait?”

Caitlin looked at Cisco with her most innocent expression. He went to take one of the remaining three slices and got his hand slapped away with the flat of the knife. Mick growled menacingly.

“You wait ‘til I choose, little man.”

He took the biggest slice. Everyone had bitten into theirs, Lisa licking everywhere for good measure, so no one would steal it. Barry and Cisco shared a confused look and took one slice each, almost afraid to try some after that display.

“Oh my _God_!”

“Mmng what is this heaven?!”

“Wait, did we get the smallest slices? That is so _not fair_!”

“Not our fault you weren’t _fast_ enough, Scarlet.”

“You knew about this, Caitlin! I thought we were friends!”

Caitlin shrugged at Cisco and scraped a bit of frosting from the top with her teeth. It mixed _just_ perfectly with the sweet apricot filling. Barry’s moaning was getting ridiculous, and Cisco moved from glowering at Caitlin to making puppy eyes to Lisa, with no effect whatsoever.

In the end it was less than two minutes since the cake was brought to the table to when everyone was licking the remains from their fingers. And that was that.

 

In the end they found a tentative solution to their weekly Cake Disputes, or at least one they couldn’t complain about because of _science_.

It was unsurprisingly Cisco who came up with it. Literally when he came up the stairs to their apartment on his second Friday night with the Rory-Snows with a wrapped box with a bow on top. When he knocked on the door, later than everyone else – including Barry for once – he handed Caitlin the package and told her to open it before serving dessert.

Inside the box was a complicated looking contraption, with a flat base and a robotic arm holding a knife hovering over the base, all connected to a metal box with a red button on it.

“This is my pride and our salvation, the Rotating Knife! A fair way to parcel out this and any future cakes in this household. We put the cake in the base, and after the first cut the knife will start turning, doing a complete rotation around it. Since we’re six people today, whenever you think the knife is hovering over a sixth of the cake you yell ‘Stop!’ and Barry presses the red button – because, you know, superspeed means no delay. The knife cuts at that point and you get your slice. This way no one can complain about size, right?”

“This won’t make the slices even, little man.”

“Nope, but if you say stop before it’s gone a sixth way around it’s your own fault, and if a slice is bigger than a sixth it’s because no one stopped it before so they can’t complain when someone gets a bigger slice. It’s science, man!”

“It’s stupid.”

“I think it’s cute.” Lisa smiled at Cisco, who smiled back, which made Leonard glare at him.

Caitlin took Mick’s hand under the table and squeezed, and he quit complaining because _oh right_. This wasn’t the only tradition they had. They let Cisco have his fun with the robot knife and everyone end up unhappy but unable to complain about it, and when their guests left for the night they went back to the kitchen for their second tradition of Friday nights. Mick took the second cake out of the oven, and they dug into it with spoons, no slices, or knives, just taking whatever they could eat. And if they fought over the leftovers the next they, well, they could always bake more until they both were full and there’d be leftovers again.

**Author's Note:**

> I... did not know... what to make of this prompt, so here, 1000 words about fairness in cake-cutting. It is actually something mathematicians have studied, if you don't belive it google 'cake cutting algorithms'! I didn't make up Cisco's solution myself, it is one of the best possibilities, if obviously theoretical (kids, don't make a rotating knife at home).
> 
>  
> 
> [tumblr](http://maqqneto.tumblr.com/)


End file.
